Friday, August 27, 2010

Parfumerie Generale - L'Oiseau de Nuit

L'Oiseau de Nuit is supposed to be a leather scent, but I don't smell leather. What I do smell is a complicated, warm and sweet, almost gourmand, oriental.

Different notes, dark and light, swirl up from my skin. Sometimes sugary, sometimes herbal, sometimes smoky and woody, OdN keeps me coming back to my wrist to smell more. The resin labdanum is honeyed wood and earth. The davana is a peach syrup floral note. Benzoin, another resin, smells like sweet vanilla.

When I first put OdN on, I thought I smelled cotton candy and beer nuts. In my mind I was back at the old fair grounds, where I've gone every October for around 30 years to the Markham Fair. The fall, for me, is that fair with it's smells of burning leaves and sawdust mixed with the sweeter smells of the foodstands. I'll go again this year, and of course there will be a midway, the rides lighting up the sky like the electric plumage of giant night birds.

This sounds amazing! I want a sample based on the review too :) I love the thought of a warm fall scent that brings up thoughts of a real fair. I'm from the South. Our "fall" fairs were still 100 degrees, talk about a different experience. Who wants to spin around and eat fried sweets with weather like that? I seem to like leather scents but I often can't distinguish leather in fragrance. I usually pick up "warm and powdery"...which I love.

EauMG: Our fair is the real deal, livestock, prize chickens, pie contests, quilts, giant pumpkins, I love it. It is however cursed - it has a nearly perfect record for always being rained on. I didn't mention it, but the smell of a muddy field is also part of my fall fair memories.